Attempting to write about Tolkien’s work at this time requires the critic to be familiar with the mountain of criticism that has accumulated in the last fifty or so years, to research the even larger body of writing relevant to Tolkien’s works, and to find a perspective that adds to the criticism that has come before. The title of Marjorie Burns’ Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien’s Middle-earth certainly promises an original study of generally acknowledged sources, a study, one thinks, that should have been done sometime ago and is, therefore, even more welcome for its appearance now. I am happy to say that there is much to praise about this book, but I must also say that there are some problematic elements as well.
Burns’ initial premise is that Tolkien’s major cultural and mythological influences came from the Teutonic/Scandinavian and the Celtic countries, although she notes that Tolkien was, at the very least, ambivalent about the Celtic influences according to comments in his letters and speeches:
Fortunately--in spite of his retractions and denials--the Celts remain strongly present in Tolkien’s literature. An all-Teutonic world or an all-Celtic one would have far less appeal; but the two, working together, give Middle-earth both Celtic enchantment and Norse vitality. (10)
This is perhaps the most succinct statement of Burns’ thesis, and most of her chapters, with the exception of chapter 4, focus on this duality.
In the first chapter, “Two Norths and Their English Blend,” Burns begins to refine what she means by “Celtic enchantment and Norse vitality.” She says that the two major facets of Norse mythology and culture that “permeate Tolkien’s mythology and his stories of Middle-earth” are “unyielding heroism and inevitable doom” (12). She shows how, in the nineteenth century and in Tolkien’s lifetime, the English turned their backs on the Mediterranean heritage that had been so popular and influential since the early years of the Renaissance and “idealized” the North, both the Teutonic German countries and, especially, the Scandinavian ones. Tolkien’s North, she argues, is the old North of the Anglo-Saxon invaders and the Scandinavian invaders, invaders who had been assimilated into British, and especially English, stock.
The Celts, or the nineteenth- and twentieth-century people who consider themselves descendants of the ancient Celts, still live in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, Cornwall. This was a problem for Tolkien, since anti-Celtic prejudice was very strong in the nineteenth century, as reactions to Matthew Arnold’s 1866 “On the Study of Celtic Literature” indicated. Although Burns does not mention it, after Arnold published his essay in Cornhill Magazine, there were angry letters to the editor denouncing Arnold and the magazine for suggesting that the Celtic people could have contributed anything of substance to subsequent literatures and cultures. It is not surprising that Tolkien (who had been told by one of his mentors to “Go in for the Celtic lad; there’s money in it” [Carpenter 56]) publicly rejected the idea that he had been significantly influenced by Celtic materials.
Burns does a very nice job here of discussing both the English prejudice against the Celts and Tolkien’s problem with the modern concept of fairies, beings which, since Shakespeare’s treatment of them, had become, especially in Tolkien’s eyes, rather frivolous. But the Celts actually provided him with an alternative. As Burns notes, Tolkien’s work with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and other pieces of medieval literature brought him into contact with the Welsh Mabinogion and the Irish Cycle of Invasions. These works, especially the supernatural figures in the Four Branches of the Mabinogi and the Tuatha de Danann of Irish literature, gave Tolkien the models for his “fair and gifted elves” (24).
The first chapter is an excellent synthesis of myth and legend, historical and biographical context, and cultural analysis. And if Burns fails to mention a few things, such as Ernest Renan’s The Poetry of the Celtic Races (1854) and W.B. Yeats’ The Celtic Element in Literature (1903), of which Tolkien would surely have been aware, such omissions do not seriously detract from this fine chapter.
The rest of the chapters focus more closely on elements of Tolkien’s fiction, mostly The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, discussing those elements as blends of Celtic and Norse materials. In chapter 5, “Spiders and Red Eyes: The Shadow Sides of Gandalf and Galadriel,” Burns compares Gandalf to Odin and Sauron and Galadriel to multiple Celtic goddesses, both Irish and Welsh, and to Shelob. In chapter 4, “Iceland and Middle-earth: Two Who Loved the North,” Burns discusses Tolkien’s debt to William Morris and makes the intriguing suggestion that Morris’ Icelandic journey was the template for Bilbo’s journey in The Hobbit. And in chapter 6, “Wisewomen, Shieldmaidens, Nymphs, and Goddesses,” she defends Tolkien from the charge of creating an exclusively male world by discussing Eowyn and Galadriel as Norse and Celtic women and, even more interesting, discussing some of the men in the novels as caring and sensitive people. Tolkien, she says, achieves “a celebration of qualities traditionally ascribed to women and found in the best of his characters, male and female alike” (128).
While this is a book that most scholars should have, especially as many scholars have little knowledge of the Celtic and Norse mythologies and cultures to which Burns refers, there are some small problems. Most of the chapters were originally published as separate articles, and so there is some unnecessary repetition. She ignores or does not seem to recognize the Celtic backgrounds of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in “Bricriu’s Feast.” And speaking of feasts, chapter 8, “Eating, Devouring, Sacrifice, and Ultimate Deserts (Why Elves Are Vegetarian and the Unrefined Are Not)” is an interesting chapter but contains almost no references to Celtic or Norse materials, and there are certainly important scenes of feasting and devouring, selfishness and selflessness in the Celtic and Norse stories.
One of the questions Burns asks at the end is, “What sort of story would Tolkien have written if his world had been unrelentingly Norse?” (174). The new book, The Children of Hurin, answers that question. But Burns has provided a valuable window into Tolkien’s sources, the cultural matrices (both ancient and modern) that guided his use of them, and the ways in which he blended the “Celtic enchantment and Norse vitality” into an almost seamless narrative of great power and beauty. Moreover, while Perilous Realms has a depth that scholars will appreciate, it is also written so clearly that non-scholars will find it accessible as well.
Work Cited
Carpenter, Humphrey. J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography. Boston: Houghton, 1977.
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[Review length: 1100 words • Review posted on September 5, 2007]